This book examines the relationship between natural law and toleration during the Early Enlightenment. Modern discussion of tolerationist theories during this period can suggest that such ideas were ...
More

This book examines the relationship between natural law and toleration during the Early Enlightenment. Modern discussion of tolerationist theories during this period can suggest that such ideas were articulated in an essentially secular and individualist mode. In fact some of the most important discussions of toleration at this time emerged from writers who were committed to a more complex structure of assumption and belief in which natural law ideas were foundational. The consequences of this fact for theories of toleration have not (until now) been systematically investigated. This book provides new insights into the relationship between natural law and toleration in the work of Samuel Pufendorf, John Locke, Christian Thomasius, Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, Jean Barbeyrac, and Francis Hutcheson. Taken together the chapters uncover the diverse ways in which the distinctive natural law arguments helped to structure accounts of toleration that remain important for us today.Less

Natural Law and Toleration in the Early Enlightenment

Published in print: 2013-05-30

This book examines the relationship between natural law and toleration during the Early Enlightenment. Modern discussion of tolerationist theories during this period can suggest that such ideas were articulated in an essentially secular and individualist mode. In fact some of the most important discussions of toleration at this time emerged from writers who were committed to a more complex structure of assumption and belief in which natural law ideas were foundational. The consequences of this fact for theories of toleration have not (until now) been systematically investigated. This book provides new insights into the relationship between natural law and toleration in the work of Samuel Pufendorf, John Locke, Christian Thomasius, Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, Jean Barbeyrac, and Francis Hutcheson. Taken together the chapters uncover the diverse ways in which the distinctive natural law arguments helped to structure accounts of toleration that remain important for us today.

Derrida describes compassion as a “fundamental mode of living together”. In this essay it is contrasted with “stealth torture”, which leaves no visible traces and succeeds in systematically ...
More

Derrida describes compassion as a “fundamental mode of living together”. In this essay it is contrasted with “stealth torture”, which leaves no visible traces and succeeds in systematically undermining compassion with the victim, in both the community of the perpetrator and of the victim. In Derrida's text, the Hebrew concept of Rachamim plays a decisive role in combination with “perhaps”. On the one hand “rachamim”, “compassion”, forms the plural of “rechem”, “womb”, while being attributed to male figures (including in Judaism and Islam, to God himself); on the other, the word “perhaps” determines Derrida's thought of the future. Torture assaults the “strangeness to oneself” that the “self” is by forcing the victim to betray what could be called compassion for oneself. Derrida's argument resonates with a powerful voice against torture of the early Enlightenment, Christian Thomasius, who identifies such self-betrayal as constitutive of torture. With the iconic image from Abu Ghraib which in intelligence circles is called “crucifixion”, we might be facing a return of the repressed foundation of the United States in a symbol of which a key aspect has been forgotten: That crucifixion was abhorred by the peoples of Antiquity and by Islam as the worst of executions.Less

Living—with—Torture—Together

Elisabeth Weber

Published in print: 2012-11-01

Derrida describes compassion as a “fundamental mode of living together”. In this essay it is contrasted with “stealth torture”, which leaves no visible traces and succeeds in systematically undermining compassion with the victim, in both the community of the perpetrator and of the victim. In Derrida's text, the Hebrew concept of Rachamim plays a decisive role in combination with “perhaps”. On the one hand “rachamim”, “compassion”, forms the plural of “rechem”, “womb”, while being attributed to male figures (including in Judaism and Islam, to God himself); on the other, the word “perhaps” determines Derrida's thought of the future. Torture assaults the “strangeness to oneself” that the “self” is by forcing the victim to betray what could be called compassion for oneself. Derrida's argument resonates with a powerful voice against torture of the early Enlightenment, Christian Thomasius, who identifies such self-betrayal as constitutive of torture. With the iconic image from Abu Ghraib which in intelligence circles is called “crucifixion”, we might be facing a return of the repressed foundation of the United States in a symbol of which a key aspect has been forgotten: That crucifixion was abhorred by the peoples of Antiquity and by Islam as the worst of executions.